In recent years, the consumption of silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials is being increased year by year. The number of processing silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials are accordingly getting increased, so that there have been demanded for making processing time more rapid, in other words, for increasing the number of processing more within a fixed time.
In graphic arts fields, there is also the same tendency. To be more concrete, now that real-time information and the frequency thereof are rapidly increased, it is required also in graphic arts field not only to complete an allotted work within a shorter time but also to do more jobs. To satisfy the above-mentioned demands of the graphic arts industry, it is required to simplify printing steps and, at the same time, to process each graphic arts film more rapidly.
To shorten the processing time comprising the time required for the processing steps such as those of develoing, fixing, washing and drying, one of the answers is to increase the transport speeds through the steps. However, in the case of processing a film with a roller transport type automatic processor and when a roller transport speed is so accelerated as to shorten the film processing time, there will raise such a trouble that the drying step is not satisfactorily performed, because the drying time is too short. As for the methods for processing films in a short time, there are some methods, namely, one of the methods is to raise a temperature in the course of drying films in an automatic processor, another method is to increase the flow rate of the air coming into contact with a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material, and a further method is to reduce a gelatin content of a light-sensitive material. When drying films in the above-mentioned methods, there will cause such a serious defect that the length of a processed photographic image will become longer than that before it is processed. This defect is so-called a dimensional stability difference between pre-processing and post-processing dimensions. Particularly, in the fields of graphic arts handling color printing, there will cause the troubles such as that the plate dimensions of four colors, yellow, mgenta, cyan and black, will not be coincident with each other. It may be considered that these defects may be derived from the change of the silver halide emulsion of a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material into silver atoms or the elution of the emulsion from the light-sensitive material and the hysteresis of gelatin.
Besides the above-mentioned troubles, another problem will result from increasing the concentration of a sulfur-containing salt in a processed film so as to change the color of the processed film into yellow during storage, because the fixing and washing time are shortened.
A further problem will result from making a density lower even if raising the development activity of a developer and the temperature thereof so as to adjust the sensitivity to the original, because the development time is shortened.
As for the means for solving these problems, there may be a means that the grain sizes of silver halide of a light-sensitive material are made smaller. However, a problem will result from remarkably deteriorating the aforementioned dimensional stability difference between pre-processed and post-processed films, when the grain sizes are made smaller to a certain extent.
As described above, a superrapid processing has been demanded. The term, a `superrapid processing` stated herein means a process in which the whole period of time from inserting the leading edge of a film into an automatic processor until the leading edge of the film comes out from a drying section of the processor through a developing tank, a cross-over section, a fixing tank, a cross-over section, a washing tank, a cross-over section and a drying section, respectively, (in other words, the whole period of time means a quotinent of the total length (in meter) of a processing line divided by a line transport speed (in meter/second), the period is within the range of from 20 sec. to 60 sec. The reason why the period of cross-over should be included therein is that a gelatin layer being transported through a cross-over section is pregnant with the liquid used in the preceeding processing step and thereby the processing may be regarded as is still being substantially progressed, of which has been well known in the art.
In addition to the above, there are the methods for inhibiting the dimensional change of light-sensitive materials, by adding a hydrophilic colloidal layer with such a latex as those disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Examined Publication Nos. 39-17702 (1964), 39-24142 (1964), 43-13482 (1968) and 45-5331 (1970): U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,376,005, 2,763,625, 2,772,166, 2,852,386, 2,853,457, 3,397,988, 3,411,911 and 3,411,912; and so forth. They are, however, not only unsatisfactory to display any effect, but also have the defect that an image density lowering is further multiplied after processed in the aforementioned superrapid processing.
Meanwhile, when processing a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material with a roller-transport type automatic processor, the density of a photograph and the dot quality thereof will be deteriorated when accelerating a roller-transport speed and shortening a developing time. To compensating these deteriorations, there are a method of increasing the activity of a developer and another method of raising the temperature of a developer. However, these methods generally have the defects that fog will be increased, dots will be coarse-grained or faded out in edge portions. Taking a high quality finishing having been recently demanded by the graphic arts field into consideration, such a simple high temperature rapid process as above-mentioned is not preferable.
Accordingly, it has been demanded to provide a super-rapid processable photographic light-sensitive material having both of a highly finished quality and a high dimensional stability.